State Dept. concedes ‘gaps’ in Clinton emails; contradiction could result in perjury charge

The emails former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton turned back over to the government last year contained “gaps,” according to internal department messages evaluating her production.

Mrs. Clinton took office on Jan. 21, 2009, but the first message she turned back over to the department was dated March 18, and the earliest-dated message she herself sent was on April 13, or nearly three months into her time in office, according to a message obtained through an open records request by Judicial Watch, which released it Monday.

Mrs. Clinton has said she continued using a previous account she’d used during her time as a senator for business at the beginning of her time as secretary, but the differing dates between the first email received and the first sent raise still more questions.

The revelation of the gap comes even as the legal situation grows more complicated.

Two Senate committee chairmen pushed Monday to try to find out just how deeply the Justice Department’s investigation into the Clinton email server has gone, as the two senators tried to figure out ways of getting Bryan Pagliano, the tech staffer who helped set up her email server at her home in New York, to spill what he knows.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson asked the government to say whether it would object to a “proffer” session between the senators and Mr. Pagliano, where he could detail, off the record, what he knows without having to worry about it being used against him in a prosecution.

Meanwhile, the State Department met with more resistance from the myriad groups who have sued to pry loose emails from Mrs. Clinton and her top aides, and who told a federal court Monday they don’t want to see the proceedings centralized in a single judge.